Finally, a spoiler-free post! Annihilation!

Finally! I’m writing a spoiler-free post! There might be some easter eggs in this post, but no spoilers. that means you can’t put spoilers in the comments either.

We went and saw the Annihilation movie last weekend. I knew it was going to be different from the book (and oh boy was it different), and I was nervous the screenwriter was gonna screw it up and that I’d hate it.

Good news! I freakin’ loved it!

And now for a spoiler free discussion about some huge that is way different in the movie than in the book. I am of course, talking about the ending. You know, that big climactic scene with the big climactic music where the biologist finally reaches the geographic goal of the expedition and gets some exposure to what the hell is actually going on.

This climactic scene is drastically different than anything that happens in the book, and there are two items in the scene that sort of take the place of other things that happen much earlier in the book.

Anyway.

The big climactic scene with the big climactic music?

I fucking loved it.

It was surreal, it was shocking, it was mindblowing, it was beautifully done, it was violent but somehow peaceful it was claustrophobically overwhelming it didn’t require or ask for my understanding.

ok, but why did I respond so positively to that scene? I can’t get it out of my head, I really had this very strong reaction to it, like there was this weird magnetic pull, like I was staring into a black hole or a supernova. It felt like the first time I saw the Milky Way, that i had to grab onto something because I was afraid i was going to fall off of the Earth and if I did it would be ok because I’d be falling towards that.

I’ve been thinking about it, trying to figure out why that scene worked so well for me.

After thinking about it for a few days, I finally figured it out.

The big climactic scene has hardly any dialog. It’s all non-verbal communication and physical movement, with moments that border on interpretive modern dance. it was all motion and sound, no words to muddy anything. I was drawn to that scene for the same reason I loved the first episodes of Samurai Jack: minimal dialog.

And I guess I often find words needlessly distracting, they box me in, I have to figure out what the inflection and context mean. don’t get me wrong, i love words, i love books, i love reading. But spoken word sometimes doesn’t work for me (or it works too well – I get all distracted by the pitch of the person’s voice and the shape of the syllables). With minimal dialog in that climactic scene, I was finally able to focus on the bigness of what was happening. I could focus on it on my own terms, with my own interpretation.

in my opinion, the lack of dialog was a brilliant choice. Your mileage may vary.

Have you seen Annihilation? did you like it? If you didn’t read the book, and went and saw the movie, did it make any sense to you? Even though it was very different from the book, I feel like the movie was a stack of easter eggs for fans of the book.

FTC Stuff

some of the books reviewed here were free ARCs supplied by publishers/authors/other groups. Some of the books here I got from the library. the rest I *gasp!* actually paid for. I'll do my best to let you know what's what.